Winchester: The House That Ghosts Built (2018) | Movie News & Review

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WINCHESTER: THE HOUSE THAT GHOSTS BUILT (2018) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

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winchester: the house that ghosts built (2018) movie

Genre | Fantasy Horror

Classification | TBA

Running time | 100+ minutes

Released | 22 February 2018

cast

Helen Mirren ... Sarah Winchester
Jason Clarke ... Eric Price
Sarah Snook
Angus Sampson

director

Michael Spierig
Peter Spierig

writer

Michael Spierig ... (re-writes)
Peter Spierig ... (re-writes)
Tom Vaughan

cinematographer

Ben Nott

music

Peter Spierig

film editor

Matt Villa

box office result

Worldwide $? million

Australia $? million

North America $? million

the best dialogue

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WINCHESTER: THE HOUSE THAT GHOSTS BUILT (2018) MOVIE IMAGES

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WINCHESTER: THE HOUSE THAT GHOSTS BUILT (2018) STORY SYNOPSIS

Inspired by a true story, WINCHESTER follows firearm heiress Sarah Winchester (portrayed by Academy Award® winner Helen Mirren) who was convinced that she was haunted by the souls killed at the hands of the Winchester repeating rifle. After the sudden deaths of her husband and child, she threw herself into the 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week construction of an enormous mansion designed to keep the evil spirits at bay. But when skeptical San Francisco psychiatrist Eric Price (Jason Clarke) is dispatched to the estate to evaluate her state of mind, he discovers that her obsession may not be so insane after all. WINCHESTER will take audiences inside the labyrinth like house that is believed to be one of the most haunted places in the world.

WINCHESTER: THE HOUSE THAT GHOSTS BUILT (2018) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty | Review date February 2018
Pop Movee Rating

Hopes were high, but the finished product falls short of expectation…

The Brothers Spierig tried valiantly, but the subtleties of the Gothic Horror genre proved too daunting a proposition to deliver viewers the prolonged and pervading sense of dread required for WINCHESTER to be considered a success.

As much as what viewers will be disappointed by WINCHESTER’s random use of genre tropes and all-too-obvious jump scares, there’s no doubt Michael and Peter Spierig were attempting to deliver a more civilized type of Horror movie, relying on mood and atmosphere as opposed to spectacle and volume. There’s a sense of continuity in this endeavour, as they seek to do with Horror in WINCHESTER what their last film did with Science Fiction.The brother’s previous film, PREDESTINATION, was a twisty, time-hopping thriller that took a source premise (Robert Heinlein’s ALL YOU ZOMBIES) and allowed Sarah Snook’s gender-bending performance to drive the plot to a WTF revelation. WINCHESTER attempts the same trick. Instead of framing the twists within the central character, this new film uses its mise en scene as the principal character, attempting to incorporate the film’s inherent “Gothic” production value AND daunt the viewer with the array of terrors that inhabit the “Winchester Mansion”.

There’s no doubting WINCHESTER is an ambitious undertaking…

Filmed principally on sound stages in the Australian city of Melbourne, the story recounts the relationship between Sarah Winchester, the widow of millionaire gunmaker William Wirt Winchester, and the mansion she built to “keep the ghosts locked up”! Whether there is a shred of truth to any of what the movie recounts, the Spierigs and fellow scribe Tom Vaughan keep their story connected to a number of the “urban myths” and “facts” that grew up around the real Sarah Winchester over the years.

As the years have progressed, the Board of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company have become more and more concerned that their majority shareholder and owner has lost her mind. In an effort to wrest the company from her control, the services of Dr. Eric Price are engaged to undertake a full psychological evaluation of Helen Mirren’s Sarah Winchester. Price is played by noted Australian character actor Jason Clarke, who will be familiar to international audiences from his roles in DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES and TERMINATOR: GENISYS. Sarah Snook is among the supporting cast, playing Winchester’s niece, while INSIDIOUS mainstay Angus Sampson pops up halfway through proceedings and manages to remain a presence deep into the Final Act.

Performances are solid across the board, but, at 99 minutes, WINCHESTER feels like it could have taken a little more time to utilise Mirren’s casting and dig deeper into her character’s psychology.

If anything is to be taken from the film’s plot, the real Sarah Winchester was a complex person who had developed a view that her husband’s company did more harm than good. Some form of guilt had driven her to seek personal redemption through alternative methods. As revealed in the film, she sought the counsel of spiritualists and was fascinated by the number ‘13’. Where the movie takes liberties is in the blurring of the impact the 1906 San Francisco earthquake had on the Winchester Mansion, the period in which the film is set. The story frames events that take place inside the house as a supernatural event, where, in reality, the death and damage was caused by the quake that devastated the West Coast American city and the surrounding towns such as Palo Alto, Santa Clara and San Jose, the location of the Winchester Mansion.

The best of the performances comes from Clarke, whose drug-addled Doctor arrives at the sprawling house with a very specific mandate. Some of his early scenes feel too much like he’s “reacting”, but he settles into a groove, becoming more sympathetic as more is revealed of his background. It’s certainly no coincidence that he’s been chosen by the Widow Winchester to be the person who conducts her psychological assessment.

Unfortunately, the film develops in such a manner that both Mirren and Clarke’s characters come off as a couple of SIXTH SENSE wannabees. Some “on the nose” plotting also tries to shoehorn 21st Century gun control politics into the film’s Gothic framework, disrupting it from it’s primary endeavour: to scare the audience!

Michael and Peter Spierig draft in their “usual suspect” production colleagues to help deliver the finished product...

Ben Nott continues as the Spierig’s “Go To” Director Of Photography. It would be a stretch to say WINCHESTER is beautifully shot, but Nott does a good job of capturing set, prop and costume details. The movie’s backlit scenes have the most impact, highlighting the architecture of the mansion, especially the windows. A number of shots are very effective at delivering a “shafts of light” look that fits in well with the scenes in which it’s utilized. Some of the the lighting is less effective. An all-too-obvious red lighting design is used in the basement to signify the descent into Hell. It may be presumptuous to suggest, but audiences are pretty clued into the Horror Movie Basement cliche. There’s no to connect the dots; assuming they haven’t been paying attention.

The film’s editing and sound design are two production elements that work pretty well…

Experienced Australian Film Editor Matt Villa does a really good job of bringing together the film’s scenes. The second half of WINCHESTER is excellent. At one point in the Final Act, the story comes to almost a complete stop, as the Spierig’s double-back and give the audience a scene vital to help a major character resolve their character arc. This could have killed the film in its tracks. The sequence in which it occurs is deep into the Final Act. However, Villa’s editing cuts the scene in without disrupting the film’s action and it provides the character in question with a much greater level of emotional buy-in during WINCHESTER’s final moments.

WINCHESTER’s sound design is also impressive. Peter Spierig provided the film’s music, while New Zealander Hayden Collow provided the soundscape. Collow has an impressive resume, having worked on all of Peter Jackson’s THE TWO TOWERS and THE RETURN OF THE KING. He also worked for Jackson on his KING KONG remake and THE HOBBIT trilogy. Besides WINCHESTER, Collow’s 2018 includes the PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK mini-series and the upcoming Nash Edgerton movie GRINGO.

Much like the Winchester Mansion, the Spierig’s movie is incomplete. Story threads start and stop. The main characters feel as though they’re not quite complete. The movie’s Gothic aspirations are undone by the insistence of transposing 21st Century social concerns into a setting that existed more than 100 years ago. A grand design this is not...